The Girl Next Door: A Budapest Story
It’s my first day in Budapest. The streets smell like history—like stones that have heard too much and still keep quiet. No one here bothers to hide the passing of time. They don’t cover it up. They don’t smooth it over. They let it be. Let it stay. Let it grow, like the mold on high ceilings or the cracks in old walls. And that’s beautiful. To see time as it is—imperfect, honest, inevitable. To see how time passes… and passes through us. It moves through us. It pulls us under. It leaves marks.